WHY STUDY ANIMALS?

Animal studies are more properly known as “research involving non-human participants” and they play an important role in Psychology: from Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s rats to more recent studies involving the language abilities of apes, animals feature heavily in all the main approaches, but especially the Learning Approach.

A research method where animals are observed in their natural environment is known as ethology. Animal experiments involve manipulating some independent variable, either in the animal’s environment (like Pavlov and Skinner) or in the animal itself (eg by genetically altering it).

This research is based on evolutionary theory. This theory, originally proposed by Charles Darwin, states that humans are descended from animal ancestors – that humans are in fact animals. Moreover, humans retain many biological and psychological characteristics from their animal ancestors that they share in common with other animals with the same ancestors: the human family tree split from other apes about 7 million years ago.

Rhesus monkeys share 93% of their genes with chimpanzees and humans and are preferred in research

Mice share 90% of their genes with humans

The types of animals used in scientific research in Europe (2005 data). "Non-human primates" means apes and monkeys - a tiny sliver but still (perhaps?) too many.

The main advantage with animal experiments is that things can be done to animals that it would be impracticalor unethicalto do to humans. For example, animals can be bredto see what effects show up in their descendants; they can also be kept in a controlled environment and observed for long periods, perhaps for their entire lives.

The principle disadvantage with animal experiments is the problem of generalisability. Even if we accept evolutionary psychology, humans have evolved to be very different from most other animals, perhaps all other animals. Drawing conclusions about human behaviour from observing animals might be invalid; at worst, it is reductionistand downright misleading.

Even if animals are genetically similar to humans, they only share a genotypewith us; they do not share a phenotype, which is a wider description of biology and environment. See the Brendgen et al. study into MZ and DZ twins for more on phenotypes.

THE HORRORS OF HARRY HARLOW

One of the most famous - or infamous - animal studies was conducted in the 1950s and '60s by Harry Harlow. Harlow experimented on rhesus monkeys and wanted to learn more about the nature of love and the attachment between a child and its mother.

Harlow raised the monkeys without a mother, providing them instead with a "wire mother" and a "cloth mother". The "wire mother" was a metal figure that would dispense milk to feed the monkey; the "cloth mother" did not dispense milk but was wrapped in terry cloth and soft to touch.

Harlow noticed the monkeys had as much need for comfort from the cloth mother as food from the wire mother.

Harlow then frightened the monkey with a scary machine. He wanted to see whether the monkey would flee to the wire mother or the cloth mother. The cloth mother turned out to be the source of comfort and safety, even though it did not provide the food that kept the monkey alive.

You may find parts of this distressing.

Harlow's early experiments might be well-designed and produced findings that were beneficial (they tell us a lot about the dangers of raising human children in orphanages and even lab animals in laboratories). However, his later studies went a lot further.

Harlow placed infant monkeys in "the Pit of Despair" - an isolation chamber where they were fed but cut off from all contact and stimulation for up to a year. The monkeys developed intense depression.

One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat after release and died five days later… the effects of six months of total social isolation were so devastating and debilitating that we had assumed initially that twelve months of isolation would not produce any additional decrement. This assumption proved to be false; twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially - Harry Harlow

These traumatised monkeys lost their sex-drive, so Harlow created the "rape rack" where female monkeys were restrained so that they could be inseminated. Harlow noticed that the mothers later rejected these children, chewing off fingers and toes and even biting off their heads.

If you find this distasteful, you're not alone. Harlow's own colleagues were disturbed by the glee with which he carried out these excessively cruel experiments. The terms "pit of despair" and "rape rack" were his own. It's hard to avoid the conclusion there was a distinct lack of love somewhere in Harry Harlow's childhood too.

Some good came of these studies, because when they were published there was an outcry. Many of the guidelines for animal research in place today were developed in response to Harlow's work. The animal liberation movement, which uses forceful tactics to free animals from laboratories, was founded by students appalled at Harlow's research.

Harlow himself was a rigorous scientist but an unsympathetic human being. He suffered from his own love-problems, with bereavement and marriage breakdown as well as alcoholism. Challenged about his treatment of animals, he responded:

I don't have any love for them. Never have. I don't really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys? - Harry Harlow

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALSAO2

The law governing the use of animals in scientific research is the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986. Research needs a licence from the Home Office; the premises must be licensed for animal research as must every individual involved in the research. Laboratory animals must be procured from “high quality suppliers” who comply with Home Office standards.

Based on the 1986 Act, the British Psychological Society (BPS) has published Guidelines for Psychologists Working with Animals (2012).

Legal Requirements:Research must not break the law regarding endangered and protected species. This particularly restricts research involving great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans).

Replacement:Where possible, live animals should be replaced with research alternatives, like videos and computer simulations. Animals should only be used as a last resort.

Choice of Species:Species bred in captivity are ethically preferable to creatures taken from the wild; research should be minimised if it involves highly sentient (thinking, feeling) animals, like the great apes

Reduction:The number of animals used should be minimised as much as possible; this involves carefully designed experiments and good use of statistics to get the maximum amount of data from the smallest number of animals

Animal Care: When not being studied, animals must be housed, fed and watered in a suitable way as well as being given space and companionship appropriate to their species

Disposal:When the research is over, animals should be disposed of humanely; ideally they should be kept alive for breeding or as pets

Procedures:Animals must be treated humanely during research. The BPS gives special consideration to these three areas:

Caging:Distress should be minimised during caging; social species need companionship and animals unused to other animals may be distressed if caged with them

Deprivation: Some food deprivation is allowable (and may be normal and healthy for animals) but distress should be minimised

Pain:Anaesthetics should be used to minimise pain; animals should be given medical treatment after research; humane killing must be considered if suffering cannot be reduced

These Guidelines are based on a Cost-Benefit Model, which means that research which breaks some Guidelines sometimes might be allowable if the benefits seem to outweigh the "costs" in terms of animal suffering.

THE THREE Rs

The ethics of animal research are sometimes summed up by three principles known as the 3 Rs.

Replacethe use of animals with different techniques; virtual simulations on computers or studying videos of past research are recommended.

Reducethe number of animals used to a minimum; in a well-designed study, the maximum data can be extracted from the minimal number of animals.

Refinethe way experiments are carried out, to make sure animals suffer as little as possible. This includes better housing and improvements which minimise pain and suffering.

THE BATESON DECISION-MAKING CUBE

Prof. Patrick Bateson (2012) has suggested a convenient way of weighing up ethical decisions about animals in research: the “decision cube”.

There are three “sides” to the cube.

The degree of animal suffering: ethical research minimises this

The benefits of the findings: ethical research will have clear benefits

The quality of the research: ethical research will be highly valid and reliable

Ideally, the cube should be as “hollow” as possible. Ethical research will be highly beneficial, high quality research with minimal suffering to the animals; on the other hand, painful, low quality research without clear benefits must be avoided.

Notice the use of the word “minimise” throughout this discussion. The BPS Guidelines do not take an absolute position on animal experiments. Research that inflicts suffering on animals should be minimised, but it may sometimes be justified if there is clear benefit to be had from it and the research is of the highest standard. It’s worth remembering that animals themselves may benefit from this research, with improvements to diet, conservation and veterinary treatment.

PRACTICAL ISSUES IN ANIMAL RESEARCH

Even if the ethical issues in conducting research on animals have been settled, there are practical issues to consider:

Cost:Animals don’t have to be paid, unlike human participants. However, the cost of buying lab animals from a Home Office approved supplier can be considerable. Then there is the cost of feeding them and keeping their housing at the right temperature.

Danger:Animals can bite and scratch and even lab-raised animals can carry diseases (indeed, research animals may be deliberately infected with diseases). This can be a danger to human researchers. Connected to this is the need to keep the research area clean and the animals free from stress that would make them aggressive.

Space:Animals are typically small and take up less space than human participants. However, if they are to be given the space suitable to the needs of their species, so that they can maintain territory and feel secure, then much more room needs to be set aside for them.

Supervision:Researchers can go home for the weekend and human participants can have “time off” but animals need to be cared for continuously, so someone has to visit them, feed and water them and possibly release them and interact with them for social time.

Read Exam questions carefully. The ethical and practical issues about using animals in research are separate; don’t answer on one when you’ve been asked about the other.

EVALUATING THE ETHICS OF ANIMAL RESEARCHAO3

This is a very controversial topic and feelings run high among some groups of people. Given that animal research in this is currently legal and taking place, I propose to evaluate this methodology as it is, rather than insisting on how it ought to be. The Examiner would surely adopt the same view.

Strengths (in favour)

The Theory of Evolution is widely accepted by scientists. It clearly implies that we can learn from the behaviour of animals and draw conclusions about human behaviour. Denying this amounts to a rejection of Darwinian evolution, which few scientists are inclined to do.

There are practical advantages to such research. Animals can be controlled more exactly than humans and observed more continuously. Their lack of self-awareness reduces the likelihood of demand characteristics in experimental conditions. Their faster breeding cycles makes it possible to observe development in an experimental timeframe of days or weeks, rather than the years it would take for humans.

The 1986 Act and the BPS Guidelines ensure that animals are protected and only the most beneficial, high quality and humane research goes on. Research that satisfies the Bateson Cube decision-making process should be considered to be ethical.

From a certain ethical position, anything that maximises the benefit for the maximum number of creatures is ethically desirable. If more humans (and other animals) benefit from research than are harmed by it, this might be seen as ethical too.

Weaknesses (against)

The “animal rights” argument claims that animals have an absolute right not to be harmed or interfered with by us. It’s not enough to make research as humane as possible: it simply shouldn’t happen at all. This viewpoint rejects calculations about the benefit to the majority, the Bateson Cube decision-making process or any approach that tries to “minimise” rather than put a stop to harm to animals.

Another argument, put forward by Peter Singer (1975), is that it is wrong to do things to animals that we wouldn’t do to humans. This is what Singer calls “species-ism” and it is a type of discrimination, just like racism or sexism.

It is also argued that animals have different needs and perceptions from humans, so we cannot know to what extent they are suffering. This makes the Bateson decision-making cube and attempts to “minimise” harm impossible to carry out.

It is also argued that, in spite of our evolutionary similarities, we cannot generalise from animal experiments to humans because our thought processes and behaviours are simply too different. If this is true then all animal studies are “low quality research” and fail Bateson’s decision-making cube test.

Applications

There have been clear applications of animal research to human life. Jeffrey Gray (1991) argues “we owe a special duty to members of our own species” and if we can benefit humans by experimenting on animals, then this is our moral duty.

Pavlov’s research does seem inhumane in hindsight, because the dogs were restrained, deprived of stimulation and surgically altered to drain away their saliva and measure it.

Pavlov’s lab was essentially a physiology factory, and the dogs were his machines – Michael Specter (2014)

Pavlov also used 35 dogs, which sounds excessive, but that was over 25 years and he tested other things on them besides condition. His research was certainly of high quality and he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the benefits his research produced.

There is also the use of a white rat, a rabbit, a dog and a monkey in Watson & Rayner’s “Little Albert” study. These animals weren’t experimented on; they were just used as neutral stimuli for Albert. However, there were still issues with how they were procured and disposed of. (Presumably Watson got them from a local pet shop and returned them afterwards but his study doesn’t make this clear.)

Research into the language abilities of great apes has changed public perceptions of apes and may change their legal status. In 2014, an Argentinean court recognised an orang-utan named Sandra to be a “non-human person” who had been deprived of her freedom by Buenos Aires Zoo.

Comparisons

Much of the research into Learning in animals has been “done to death” and would not pass Bateson’s test in the 21st century: if you want to see operant conditioning in rats or pigeons, you can watch the films made by Skinner online. Some of this research, such as the cruel experiments on rhesus monkeys carried out by Harlow, dragged the Learning Approach into disrepute.

Some of the most interesting contemporary research on animals is from the Cognitive Approach, looking at the language and problem-solving abilities of apes. Apes have been taught to use human sign language and one of the first apes to do this, a chimpanzee named Washoe, died in 2007. Washoe inspired Peter Singer to launch The Great Ape Project to campaign for changes in the law, so that apes should be treated under the oral category of “persons” rather than as “property”. In this way, Cognitive Psychology could be seen as advancing the cause of animal rights, rather than exploiting animals.

Ayumu is a chimp who can beat humans in a test of Working Memory. This sort of Cognitive research has strengthened the argument that great apes are "non-human persons".

EXEMPLAR ESSAYHow to write a 8-mark answer

Evaluate the use of non-human animals in psychological research. (8 marks)

A 8-mark “evaluate” question awards 4 marks for describing opportunity sampling (AO1) and 4 marks for evaluating it (AO3). You need a conclusion to get a mark in the top band (7-8 marks). "Animal Studies" turns up in the Specification for the Learning Approach but may use examples from all Approaches.

DescriptionNon-human animals are used in psychological research because it is considered practical and ethical to do things to animals that researchers could not do to humans. For example, you can study the development of animals in a shorter time frame than humans.The use of animals is based on evolutionary theory. Since humans have evolved from animal ancestors, we will share many behaviours and physical traits in common with animals that share the same ancestors. Rhesus monkeys share 93% of their genes with humans.The use of animals is governed by a 1986 Act that makes researchers get a licence from the Home Office before they can do research on animals.The BPS Guidelines (2012) demand that psychologists should consider how to treat animals humanely, such as housing them appropriately, reducing their suffering and disposing of them humanely afterwards. This is a Cost-Benefit Model that may permit animal suffering if the scientific benefits outweigh it.

EvaluationAnimal research may be acceptable if the results can be generalised to humans. This is more likely if the animals share the human genotype (such as apes or monkeys) but less likely if they do not share our phenotype (because they live in a different environment and have different relationships).The Bateson decision-making cube would suggest research may be ethical if it is high quality, beneficial and low in animal suffering.Opponents would argue that animals are sentient and experience suffering from being experimented on. Apes in particular are considered to be "non-human persons" by some people.Peter Singer argues that carrying out research on animals that you would not do on humans is "species-ist".

ConclusionAnimal research was dragged into disrepute by Harry Harlow's cruel experiments on monkeys in the 1960s. However, many people believe that the 1986 law and the BPS Guidelines now make sure this such of research could never happen again.

Notice that for a 8-mark answer you don’t have to include everything about animal research. I haven’t mentioned details from the BPS Guideline, the 3 Rs or examples from Pavlov or Skinner. But it is a balanced answer - half description, half evaluation.